Deleted Emails And Destroyed Documents: Uncovering Trump’s Hypocrisy

Donald Trump Has been Destroying Docs & Emails for Decades

In a recently published investigative article by Kurt Eichenwald of Newsweek, a disturbing pattern of destruction of records by Trump has emerged. It’s especially relevant since Donald Trump has used Hillary Clinton’s email scandal to his great advantage. Hillary Clinton’s position is that the destroyed emails were of a personal nature and not relevant to the FBI probe. The difference in the Trump case, is the emails and documents he destroyed were company records, not personal records, specifically ordered by the court to be turned over. Further, through various techniques and outright lying to the court, not only did Trump avoid producing the documents, many of the cases settled without admission of guilt, and to Trump’s advantage.

After looking into decades of legal cases and the practices and behaviors of Donald Trump, there began to emerge a clear pattern of what Eichenwald describes as the “the Trump strategy”:

The Trump strategy was simple: deny, impede and delay, while destroying documents the court had ordered them to hand over.

Destruction of evidence

In the 1973 housing discrimination case brought against the Trumps, there were multiple tactics deployed in order to delay the production of pertinent documents. Through these delays, the Trumps were able to destroy documents the court had ordered.They used wording loopholes and even libel suits to delay the production of documents.

Indeed, during the housing discrimination suit brought by the government, rather than produce court ordered documents when officials arrived to obtain them via court ordered access, they denied the government attorneys entry. Trump was present, however he was claiming he was not expecting investigators and that he wished for their attorneys to be present. It turns out that not only had Trump and his legal team been notified by the government by three letters and three phone calls, but Trump’s lawyers were conveniently out of their offices. This forced attorneys for the government back in to court again for yet another delay. Tactics like this went on endlessly, until finally the government struck a settlement.

These practices continued throughout the decades. Allegations of destruction of evidence have even been leveled at Trump in cases where he himself was the plaintiff. In one case against a real estate developer Cordish Cos., Trump sued in state court after the immediate opening of 2 casinos flying under the Hard Rock brand. In his suit Trump claims he was cheated out of the deal because a former associate had conspired against him and kept him in the dark so he should therefore be entitled to earnings.

Apparently, however, when the defendants in the case asked for Trump to produce documentation that back up his claim of being misinformed about the deal, in order to prove he was cheated, the delays for production began. Trump failed to produce emails. There were other reasons for the emails to be produced, and that is for the defendants to be able to prove Trump knew about the deal and knew his former associate was working on it. Not hard to understand why, Trump had an excuse as to why he couldn’t produce emails. He told the court that they had no servers to retrieve emails from and that they backed up over previous back ups, thus destroying older emails. Apparently Trump thought the court should just go on his word. It came to light however, that Trump totally lied about the server. It came to light after deposing several former Trump IT specialists that Trump did have servers. The revelation of the server changed nothing because the records had been destroyed, according to a Trump IT executive. Soon after the court ordered the newly discovered servers to be examined by independent forensic teams to determine any malfeasance, Trump dropped the case.

Trump the hypocrite

In the takeaway from this epic Newsweek article, there is one thing that hits as the apex of hypocrisy on the part of Trump. After all the calls to “lock her up” ad nauseam, all the pontificating and bloviating about his opinion of the criminality of Clinton’s deleted emails, there is one assertion, given by Trump that stands out. It’s also very clear that Trump’s own assertions apply only to him. Ironic that by deleting emails that were court ordered to be turned over by him, Trump isn’t a criminal in his own eyes. Given the way he criticizes Hillary Clinton for doing much less, could Trump be be a bigger hypocrite?

Yet when the government filed its standard discovery requests, the Trumps reacted as though seeking that information was outrageous. They argued in court that prosecutors had no case and wanted to riffle through corporate files on a fishing expedition.